The Season of Shadows
by haintbleu
Summary: Anna finds herself pursued by something she had thought long dead. The winter months have always called forth magic of a darker nature. Written for the 'Hansanna for the Holidays 2019' tumblr event


Strange to remember how ready she had been to curl up safely by the hearthstones. How the fire had once held more appeal than the darkness. She'd forgotten that as sure as light brings warmth, those standing in the light cast shadows. And so, his coming had been as inescapable as the changing of winter into spring into summer into… him. Hans. Her shadow prince.

_Irredeemable Monster._

The words, spoken in the cozy fireside times, were Elsa's, but Anna had tried to use them as a ward. A scrap of iron to defend herself against a revenant that had risen from its barrow and shambled towards the threshold of her heart where it paced and whispered, begging to be seen and named.

_Monster. Irredeemable Monster._

The ward didn't work. Nature's magic might sing in Elsa's veins and frozen fractals might dance from her fingertips, but the Snow Queen's words held no more power than any other mortal's. And they held no sway at all over anything so wholly estranged from the four elements. They could not protect Anna from her pursuer.

He followed her into her dreams. She would writhe and shudder in her bed only to gasp herself awake at daybreak, then press her small fist against her mouth to muffle her frustrated sobs as the last lingering images of his visit burned away in the flat, grey dawn. Feeling exhausted and hag-ridden, she'd rise and stumble past her dressing table, deliberately avoiding her mirror.

She knew what she would find there. Her own haunted, feverish eyes. Eyes that hungered. Eyes that craved. If she did not see them in herself, she reasoned, she could not recognize them in Hans's face, staring back at her whenever they met. She'd forgotten that a haunting needn't be visible to make its presence known.

A breath caressing the nape of her neck. A shiver running down the length of her spine. And, most unnerving of all, the feeling of being watched.

She'd never had anything like Elsa's gifts or pristine, ethereal elegance, but the way that Hans looked at Anna made her feel like she was something otherworldly; a huldra, a siren, a creature of bewitching, cataclysmic beauty. A two-faced, double-edged, dangerous kind of beauty. His kind of beauty.

_Irredeemable Monster._

He was shadowing her down a dark hallway on this, the longest night of the darkest season. The season of witches and wraiths. The season of the Wild Hunt. The sharp, intermittent click of his boot heels dogged her over the uncarpeted sections of floor. The noise reverberated in Anna's ears, louder than the hooves and horns of any phantasmal hunting party. Anna, however, was no helpless quarry.

She moved down the dim corridor like a will-o'-the-wisp, her customary sober greens and purples set aside for a gown of a much lighter colour. Something that could be seen and tracked in the gloom.

But for the way her heart and pulse were pounding, she could believe that she truly was such a spirit; nothing but air and flame and will, possessed by the singular desire to lure him, to draw him, to have him.

He has made her so hungry.

_Irredeemable Monster._

The words, enticing as fairy music, echoed in Anna's mind as she slipped into the portrait gallery. Dozens of eyes watched her from the walls, just as his eyes sought her in the deep floor-to-ceiling blackness.

All at once, Anna darted across the room and out the door, then pressed herself against the wall of the adjoining passage. She'd heard Hans cry out when she'd broken into her run, and now she listened to his footsteps sprint across the gallery. He burst through the door, taking the corner blind, and she was upon him, twining her arms around him, exultant as a draugr seizing its prey.

He groaned like a desperate, unshriven soul and crushed her back against the wall. Anna caught the gleam of his eyes in the darkness before he ducked his head down to her throat. His mouth, then his tongue, then his teeth were on her skin. Anna clutched at his hair and arched her body into his.

When he began to press his knee between her legs, she took hold of his lapels and let herself slide down the wall, urging him to follow, a siren drawing her sailor down to the seabed.

Kneeling above her, Hans stripped himself of his gloves and tossed them back somewhere in the gloom. He pushed her skirts up around her waist and raked his nails over her thighs. Anna hissed then growled then dragged him on top of her, ensnaring him in her limbs, needing to feel his weight squeeze the breath from her body even as she sucked it back from between his lips.

If Hans was a monster, he was her monster. If he was irredeemable, perhaps she was as well. If that was the truth, then so be it.

In the season of long nights, let love be monstrous.


End file.
